What happened to family photos?

These days, we can take photos at a moments notice. I used to love my digital camera for the ease of use and  the instant pictures. No film to buy or develop. Just delete any unwanted photos.
The world is full of computers, cds and phones with photos of important moments. Few people print the pictures that can be passed at family dinners and reunions. There are too many options-print at home, email to the club store, take the card to the drug store, edit for perfection. We used to send the complete roll of film to the processor and a week later we received every shot-good or bad.

 I remember on every trip to grandmothers getting the photo box out. She told me about ancestors who were in the old pictures and shared those of new great grandchildren. My daughters take pictures of my grandchildren's accomplishments that I will never see. They are saved somewhere in space.

Now, I am the photo printer and keeper. Online services have printed books for me. I have a  book for each of the grandchildren, my first trip to Italy, my ancestors, places important in my life and other trips. Occasionally I print photos and send them to relatives. Pictures need to be shared. At the end, a picture of a loved one is what we cherish and keeps that long gone ancestor alive in memory.

Mothers Day 2014

Tomorrow is the official Mothers Day. But we all know that is everyday if you have children. Caring moms celebrate little moments at random. Chubby hands that reach for you in sleep, a one tooth smile, mama, the phone call that starts "Mom", and the list of special times goes on.
Mothers have special skills that are characteristic to women only. They can listen to numerous levels of conversations and demands at once. While tying shoes or changing diapers. Then they have the patience to answer each request. Sometimes it is in a calm tone and sometimes not. Moms don't have to be angels. Their hormones wont let them.
Mothers know all the answers. Just ask a question and they will tell you everything about the subject. Examples are used and follow up happens. When a child asks, "how do you make people?", you can explain sexual reproduction or show them how to draw a person which is what they really wanted to begin with. They want you to be well informed for life.
Mothers are several steps ahead of the rest of the family. For trips, they pack extra clothes (even a shirt for dad), always have a band aid or snack in their purse, and sense when their child doesn't feel well. Moms know how to get to the guilty party in a fight. They can distract whiny or unhappy children by changing the direction of interest or subject.
Mothers are entertainers, nurses, doctors, chauffeurs, peacekeepers, encyclopedias and the endless source of life supplies. All this on top of being wives, employees, gardeners, financial planners, cooks, vacation planners, travel navigators, and family calendars. My dream vacation is having it all planned for me-even someone packing my bags.
A mother shares her belief in God and teaches a child to pray when afraid, desperate, lonely, and thankful for goodness and beauty. And to rejoice and trust in His love.

As children age, they need to pull away from Mom to gain independence and learn how to live on their own. This can be a painful, antagonistic time and can go on for years. It is hard for Moms to let go and realize that they are needed in different ways. You no longer have all the answers. You're not even asked. A mother needs to make a new place for herself. Be an advisor. Be comfort. Be a babysitter. Do not be a bank.  Do not tell them how to raise their children. They still remember the mistakes you made on them. Admire and celebrate and comfort your children's success and failure. Show them by your example that life will go on. Be available when they need you. Children always come home again.

When your children have left the nest, that is a good time to go back and celebrate life with your own aging Mother. NOW that you have made the journey yourself, you can understand her struggle to raise all those children.

Mother and her flowers

Written on a cold winter day: 

 

 

 

Today, January 3rd, in the mail, I received my first seed catalog. Leafing through the pages, I was reminded of my mother’s love affair with her flowers. The family always had a large vegetable garden to feed nine people, but Mother’s true pleasure came from the flowers she nurtured. From the early sixties, at Ray, Ohio, I remember the begonias, coleus, geraniums and sultanas (now called impatiens) that she planted on either side of the front steps. They grew into profuse bushes in the early morning shade and wilted in the intense afternoon sun. She watered them using the metal bucket and dipper faithfully every evening, despite the other chores that a family of nine created. Visitors always commented on them and few left without a start of the plants. At the end of the season in the fall, she potted many of the little starts and took them inside the house. They grew slowly in the cool, sunless winter days. But when spring came, they quickly sprouted new leaves and were soon ready to be transplanted in the beds, starting the cycle for her all over again.

Houseplants, mainly philodendron, were always plentiful in her home. One year at Ray, the plant vined so much that she let it grow along nails she placed all over one living room wall. One of our Saturday chores was washing and polishing the many leaves. When she moved from the farm to the condo, she took a philodendron in a five gallon pot with her. She had it staked with a wooden slat and tied with twine. That was one thing about her gardening- she used whatever was available for a stake regardless of the appearance to the plant.  At the condo, the plant continued to climb and wind around the stake, and she worried daily what she should do with it. It needed transplanted, but into what and how would she do it. I finally convinced her that she could just trim it back and let it start over. Mother cut most of the plant away, but it was never the same. I think she let it decline as she was doing herself. She could no longer care to water or feed the plant.  When her furniture and belongings were divided, Carol took the philodendron and added it to her plethora of houseplants.

Mother spent most of her life on a small farm near Willard, Ohio. When we moved there in the early 1960s, the place was truly depressing. Junk everywhere. The house needed lots of work. My parents set to work right away cleaning the place up. Translated, that meant lots of work for us kids. There was lots of space between the house and the barn for a vegetable garden. While we hoed the beans on hot afternoons, it seemed like acres. Mother kept room for her flowers, though. Along the west edge near the apple tree, she planted orange poppies that bloomed every spring. One summer, she planted several rows of dahlias along the garden path that led to the barn. The showiest ones were the large dinner plate dahlias. They were wine colored (her word), yellow, and velvety red. Mother knew just how to arrange the plants for the best effect. When visitors pulled around the curve of the driveway, they could not help but see their beauty. The dahlias gave her great pleasure as well as frustration. The bulbs had to be dug every fall, tagged and stored in the basement after the first frost. The tagging was the hardest part. She did not have plastic tags we can get now at any nursery, but instead used an old white sheet torn into strips. Each strip had the color and size written on it with magic marker then was wrapped around its group of bulbs. Needless to say, sometimes in the spring, she had to deal with surprises since the cool dampness of the dirt basement was not the best environment for maintaining legible markings on the cloth. She often had to guess at color and size which led to a great variation in the color arrangement in the garden. When she began to set the bulbs out in the spring, she always saved some to pass along to friends and relatives. If you admired one of her dahlias, she had the bulbs to send home with you.

As the farm took shape, Mother was able to focus her attention to placing beds of plants and shrubs around the house. I remember the many flower and seed catalogs that came in January and how she spent hours planning her order. I loved her excitement. Her roses were from Jackson & Perkins. Unless she went to the greenhouse and could not resist a certain color. Other plants and seeds came from Burpees. Unless she went to the local greenhouse and saw a certain plant she couldn’t resist. As the years passed, a variety of perennials were available at greenhouses like Corso’s.

In the spring, she bought primroses and pansies. For the summer, she first bought begonias, impatiens and marigolds. Columbines, lupines, sweet william, hollyhocks, lilies and coneflowers and black eyed susans began to fill in a lot of spaces. The advantage to her was that the perennials came up every year and reproduced profusely. She would just thin out the new plants in the spring and start a new bed or find an empty spot. I don’t think she ever thinned them and threw them away. Another way Mother got plants was to start them from seeds that she gathered each fall. The seeds were dried and put in some sort of container-tins or in little white rags tied in bunches. Many zinnias and marigolds got their start in the big old washtub. Mother loved mums in the fall but became aggravated that they soon lost their exotic colors to the original white or yellow.  In the spring, she loved all the colors of the irises, but hated dividing the bulbs and pulling the nasty grass from between the rows.

One year she bought a small greenhouse. Together we bought packets of seeds and spent spring evenings filling the little pots with soil and pressed the seeds into the soil. We had flat after flat of all the varieties of our dreams. My brother Ralph built shelves to hold the flats of pots. He also rigged a heater for cool nights. We waited anxiously for the seedlings to arrive. They finally did -all at once. So many plants! Tall and spindly as if reaching for the sun. We had to thin and rotate and water. As they grew, we realized we only needed a small amount of them for ourselves. I think we gave plants to everyone we knew. We used the greenhouse for several years. I’m not sure why we stopped. I think we had enough. I know that I never had a place for all those plants and realized I did it to help her. And she did it to help me.

At any time of the day, Mother could be found doing some kind of work in her flowers. For the hot sun she conceded to wearing a straw hat and a long sleeve shirt to ”keep her freckles away”.  She did not wear gloves. If you visited her, she had to wash up for you. Any visit included a tour of her flower gardens. She had to show off a new variety or just any thing that was in bloom always offering a start of this or that  She forever pushed those begonias at me, but I still don’t like them even if they are red and double. While she showed me around  the other flowers, she continued to work and plan -pulling a weed here and there or wondering where to transplant overcrowded plants or some worry about a plant that wasn’t thriving. She is the only person I know that demanded her money back if a rose or peony or lily did not produce. Not only at a greenhouse but thru letters to J&P and Burpee’s. And she got satisfaction.

 

Over the years, Mother’s flowers grew far and wide. Not only into all the beds that she placed here and there in the yard and garden, and around the house and garage, but in my gardens and every garden of friends and relatives.

As I work in my own flower beds, I think of her. The wind waves the pink cosmos and I remember that she called them standing cyphers. When I get a whiff of the sweet william near the front door, I remember that she gave it to me. As I watch the humming birds on the coneflowers, I am reminded of  her full, wild gardens at the farm.

Each spring at the greenhouse, I still buy something just for her.

 

Transplants

Transplants

 

Sweet williams

Sweet memory

Of you

Growing near the front door.

 

Sweet scent

Chokes my breath

As I move back

To you and the days

We spent digging

Flowers for me

From your gardens.

 

Blooms that you spread

Through my years

To have you

With me

Each season.

 

Now I dig

For my daughters

And tell them

Of you.

Transplanting the sweetness

You still sow.

Happy Lights

It works!

This winter, I purchased a "happy light" as Ela and Aleks call it. This is a simulated sunlight lamp for people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. In other words, depression due to constant gray days. I turn it on and after about 1/2 hour, I feel my spirits lift. Sometimes, I leave it on all day.

Another happy thought to write about- print and grammar mistakes on social networks by humans and auto correct.

School Friends

School Friends 
3/27/14


Yesterday I traveled to Lodi Ohio with Chris to meet Arlene for lunch. Both are high school friends that I have been in contact with occasionally since graduation. Our friendship was centered over our freshman and sophomore years.
 After 6th grade at Steuben school, all the outlying students went to junior high at the high school on split sessions until the new junior high was completed. We were outsiders to town kids already familiar with each other and knew the established social hierarchy. My sixth grade friends were spread out over different class groups I now realized were arranged due to scholastic achievement. My best friend soon found a new town friend and was able to acclimate to the new surroundings. I think I never did. I don't remember any friends from 7th or 8th grade. My life was secret and I kept to myself for survival. Those memories are cold and gray and alone among the class mates who had money and privilege and made fun of my speech and my clothes and lack of social knowledge. The thing that saved me then was that I was smarter than most of them. And I had a family to go home to for awhile.
As a freshman, I remember that Arlene and I met in Mrs. Rineharts Algebra class and ate lunch together. After eating, we cruised the halls, flirting with boys we passed and those we could see through classroom door windows. In the winter, I did go to a few basketball games with her and did stay overnite once at her home on Ash St. My sisters could drive and thus I was able go to some school events. My parents both worked second shift at Pioneer Rubber and with one car, we were severely limited in after school and other social activities. Arlene never stayed the night with me. I knew my home was different from hers and was afraid of being judged again and maybe losing her friendship.
Anyway, the school year ended and we didn't see anyone from school over the summer. I worked at Holthouse Bros farm in Celeryville during the break. The season before my freshman year was my first job. My first checks were $15 per 40 hour week and Saturday mornings. That summer, the  federal minimum increased and I was raised to $45. The ready acceptance of Carol and Brendas little sister by the experienced workers, I suppose gave me some pseudo confidence  for the next years in school. The money also raised my socioeconomic level. My clothes matched that of other girls.

Somewhere during my sophomore year, I met Chris through Arlene, I guess. We had a study hall together and did go to some ball games together. Once, I went to her house and we listened to music-the Stone Ponies singing Different Drum. Arlene had moved past us. She had a steady boyfriend. I saw her in classes and lunch but her focus was on the boy.

During junior and senior year, Arlene and Chris began attending the Vocational School in Shelby to study cosmetology. Several of those first mornings of school, I tried to talk with them, but they had already moved on. And I adjusted again with Carol and Suzan and Ruth.

Years later I ran into Arlene after she married a Smith guy and attended our New Haven church. And Chris and I reconnected when she worked at a local flower shop. They were simple chats but a reconnection still that remained and for me came to fruition at yesterdays meeting. Years of life have come and gone for me, but the occasional thought of how they must have really liked something about me have helped sustain a life. Friendship increases in value with time. Truth. I am glad that Arlene and Chris and I can laugh together in this age.

Random Thoughts for 3/19/14

I saw a car in Bowling Green, Ohio with license plate ZINNIA. Did not see the driver, but I imagined she was several years younger than me, full of busy confidence and combed her long hair with her fingers. She was on her way to the greenhouse because she needed more plants for the flower beds. Probably for the perennials that were on sale. Coneflowers, daylilies, bee balm, daisies...


Lack of membership finally closed the doors of St Sebastian's after a hundred years of spirit. Latin mass left in the 1970s. The townships children went away to college and never came back. The parents aged and went to the nursing home and then final settlement in the cemetery near the church. Most of the surrounding land was bought by corporation farmers who plow to the road. The old homes are slowly fading and losing their battle against weeds and shrubs and the wild. That hope and hard work of the settlers is finished. In the distance I can see the gravestones standing alone against the stark white of the church. Lonely and left, they will soon lean and wear away to the earth.

My drawings-
My MS life-several years ago in the winter, I had trouble with my thought processes and speech and communication. I also had headaches and became very depressed. I was convinced that I had a tumor, but my neurologist assured me that all this was part of my illness. Anyway, about that time, I started drawing. At first it was doodles, then abstract doodles that became more complex and intense. I am still compelled to draw everyday. Some drawings get painted or pen and inked. Bright colors. Imagined angles and shapes. I don't know where it comes from (I really know WHO it comes from) but it is a comfort to my brain. This winter, on our flight home from Florida, I learned another reason why. As the flight readied for departure, I was already drawing to pass time. The very helpful attendant, Karen, asked if the drawing was for her and I said "if you like". I soon finished the picture in black inks, and as we neared landing, I passed it to the attendant with name tag Karen, but she was the wrong one. Seems there was 2 Karen flight attendants. The other one appeared and I gave it to her. She thanked me with tears in her eyes and shared that she had lost a dear friend that very day and my drawing was a sweet gift. I still think of her as I draw daily and wonder if she is finding comfort for her loss. And say a prayer for her. God works in wondrous ways.
Karen worked on the Ft Lauderdale to Atlanta Southwest flight on February 26. Please be kind to her and other Karens.